An electronic device, such as an integrated circuit device, can include one or more debug ports that permit external devices to access the electronic device. Such external devices can access the electronic device to perform manufacturing tests, such as integrated circuit device validation or quality assurance by external testers, or to permit debug activities, such as stopping and starting program execution, reading control registers, and enabling various debug features of an integrated circuit device by a debug tool. As such, an external device coupled to the debug port of an electronic device often has the ability to access the internal architecture of a device access information such as device microcode and the contents of registers in the electronic device. However, the details of the internal architecture and information stored at the device are typically proprietary to manufacturers and users of the electronic device. Therefore, it can be desirable to limit the ability to access an electronic device by an external device, and restrictions are often placed on electronic devices to limit the ability to access information stored at such an electronic device.
An electronic device can include debug ports that implement associated techniques for authenticating a debug port of the electronic device to allow external devices access resources of the electronic device. For example, a debug port can include an authentication controller that is used to authenticate requests from external devices.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.